Tag: Hybrid vehicles

EV Hold-out Mazda Changes Its Tune

Mazda CEO Yamanouchi - Credit MazdaMazda Motor is shifting direction to make its own hybrid and battery-electric vehicles, according to a report today in Automotive News (may require subscription). The move, if confirmed, would mark a rapid retreat from the ‘trend-bucking’ EV skepticism that has been a staple of Mazda’s message.

Mazda R&D chief Seita affirmed late last month that Mazda would achieve mandated fuel economy savings by improving engines and transmissions, and by redesigning vehicles to reduce their weight. The Detroit News quoted president and CEO Takashi Yamanouchi echoing that sentiment at last week’s New York International Auto Show, promising release of a brand new engine next year.

However, Seita had also admitted that Mazda lacked the cash to finance development of its own EV powertrains. And this weekend’s Automotive News report directly contrasts the old strategy, quoting Yamanouchi as saying that hybrids and battery-powered electric vehicles developed in-house will contribute to its plan in order to “boost the average fuel economy of its cars globally 30 percent by 2015.”

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by pfairley

Mazda’s Hybrid-free Strategy of Necessity

mazda-tribute-credit-mazda-usa
Mazda's Tribute SUV uses Ford technology

How to make sense out of the bewildering differences in strategy by automakers today? In the case of Mazda, which rejects hybrid vehicles as a fad, the strategy may be one of necessity.

Mazda R&D chief Seita Kanai confirmed last week that Mazda still has no plans to commercialize its own hybrid technology, according to a report last week in Automobile Magazine. The Japanese automaker markets a hybrid version of its Tribute, a small SUV, which Automobile  Magazine writes off as a Ford engineered system closely resembling the technology in Ford’s Hybrid Escape. Kanai said Mazda will achieve mandated fuel economy savings by improving engines and transmissions, and by redesigning vehicles to reduce their weight.

But Kanai also admitted at the same event for reporters in Japan last week that Mazda couldn’t afford to field a hybrid. And he acknowledged that the resulting technology gap represented a worrisome problem for the company with buyers enamored of hybrids. Here’s how Kanai put it, according to Automotive News:

“We’re in real trouble,” Kanai said of the rapidly falling hybrid prices. “It’s a threat. We don’t have the resources to get involved in that kind of competition.”

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by pfairley

GPS-enabled Software Boosts Hybrid Vehicle Efficiency

Mechatronics meets the plug-in hybrid this month at IEEE Spectrum Online:

Drivers use all manner of data these days to travel efficiently, and vehicles should follow their lead, according to University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee mechatronics expert Yaoyu Li. He predicts that vehicles privy to data in the latest GPS-enabled electronic navigators — which download real-time traffic data to update route suggestions on the fly — will provide substantial fuel savings in the decades to come.

That’s because:

An uninformed plug-in is almost certain to discharge its battery power either too quickly or too slowly. If it simply uses the battery until it is discharged, it will lack an electric option for later stop-and-go situations where running the internal combustion engine is inefficient. Alternatively, if the plug-in acts like a conventional hybrid and lives in the moment, blending its electric and gasoline energy based on the driving conditions that second, it is likely to arrive at its destination with leftover battery charge. Either way, the plug-in will have consumed more gasoline than necessary.

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by pfairley